[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Product Hunt is full of shill accounts, pai...
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Tell HN: Product Hunt is full of shill accounts, paid upvotes and
spam
Product Hunt was once a curated collection of interesting new
products, shared to a small newsletter list of enthusiasts. Today,
it has become a pyramid scheme of paid upvotes, shill accounts, and
rampant spam. And nobody is talking about it. Have a look at
Today's #2Product of the Day with 500+ upvotes. They are ALL sock
puppet accounts, and most comments and upvotes within a short
period of time. The comments are all obvious astro-turfing, with
names like "AccountHolder2". Most of the other top products of the
day have the same problem. See for yourself here:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/teyuto-2 Something is deeply
rotten with Product Hunt. There are maybe 2 or 3 posts in the top
products of the day that aren't full of utter garbage comments from
fake accounts. I shared a link to this before and it was marked as
Dead. I'm assuming because the system thought it was promoting
someone's Product Hunt launch rather than pointing out a huge
failing in one of the most important communities online. Most
upvotes are commercially driven. It seems like something that could
be fixed with reasonable moderation.
Author : dannywarner
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-03-01 04:52 UTC (18 hours ago)
| jabo wrote:
| Here's some anecdata. About a year ago I posted on ProductHunt
| and a few hours later I received this cold DM on Twitter:
|
| ---
|
| Hi ,
|
| Amazing product, Congratulations on the launch of your product,
| in product hunt .your product post deserves to get top 5. I saw
| your product hunt post, it got 23 votes. But still don't get any
| badge. I am Interested to help you to get, product of the day
| #1-5 badge 100% Guarantee. I can boost & promote your Product
| Hunt campaign & also can make your product, Product of the Day
| #1-5 Position only for $100. After successfully completing my
| work you can pay me. Increase more sales and engagement. You can
| be 100% sure that I won't violate PH's T&C. The product will be
| 100% safe. I hope that you can see the rank improvement within
| 1-2 hours after starting my work. Let me know if have anything
| else you want to know. Best Regards
| Lascaille wrote:
| >It seems like something that could be fixed with reasonable
| moderation.
|
| That means it cannot be fixed, because the spammers are a billion
| developing world schoolchildren posting from their phones because
| some game or app gives them a micron of credit if they post a
| comment, while your moderators need a modicum of trust.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Product Hunt is a relic from the 2013 era of internet companies.
| I didn't realize people still used it seriously. Might as well
| also use StumbleUpon.
| qnsi wrote:
| Everywhere where there is incentive difference there are
| problems.
|
| Why would anyone go on producthunt and browse new products? When
| I need something I google. But having a vanity plate on landing
| page "product of the day" gives social value, so product creators
| abuse the system.
|
| Same thing goes for reddit reviews. If you go to any subreddit
| multiple times a day someone would ask for a recommendation.
| Normal user might spent 5 seconds answering "I use product X. Its
| good". But if I am a marketer in firm making X, I can write long,
| seemingly unbiased overview, then mentioning X is best. I get
| paid to do so.
| AHASIC wrote:
| It's a popularity contest these days and niche products rarely
| see the light of day there.
|
| I am an approved submitter there and I can confirm that there are
| a bunch of FB pages for producthunters to ask for upvotes from
| one another.
| smt88 wrote:
| Maybe I was too late to PH, but it always seemed to be this way
| to me.
|
| For years, "#1 on ProductHunt" is a strong signal to me to stay
| away. It means the product is not much more than a landing page
| and is run by marketers trying to fake it until they make it.
| RileyJames wrote:
| I found it pretty awesome very early on. Before it got its
| funding round, tho it remained quite good for a while after.
|
| But it clearly became garbage at some point. Personally I
| stopped visiting when it seemed like a good 40%+ of the
| "products" were 'info products', courses and mostly
| insignificant curations of other products.
|
| I liked it when it was a 'dedicated show HN, with some polish'.
| But it didn't last. And I didn't find anything else of value
| there.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Is there anyone out there who took a funding round and then
| didn't despise working for their company?
|
| That's my (current) dream.
| rchaud wrote:
| There have been posts here before that began to criticize PH for
| the same reasons you describe. From what I remember, the
| honeymoon period for that site was about a year. After that
| gaming the system became a lot more common.
|
| Most 'products' are of very low quality, or nothing at all, e.g.
| "a collection of color palettes for your website". There are
| sites like AppSumo where you can buy lifetime licenses for SaaS
| software, and I've found that to be a better source of tools,
| because those are somewhat mature products with a specific
| audience in mind.
| [deleted]
| sissjdb wrote:
| orangepurple wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| > It seems like something that could be fixed with reasonable
| moderation.
|
| This has got to be peak HN naivete
| lebaux wrote:
| I was marinading the idea of making a side project with deeper
| reviews of software, good and bad.
|
| The domains I had in mind:
|
| productrant.org
|
| productc*nt.org
|
| productant.org
|
| I finally settled on productrant.org started working on my first
| bigger piece and then the war in Ukraine broke out and abolished
| my enthusiasm.
|
| I do not see it as a potent commercial project, I think I am just
| at that stage of life when I want to reach "best" section at HN
| once and subsequently get comments explaining how wrong I am
| about everything.
|
| Thoughts on the domain? The overall idea? Thanks!
| Wiseacre wrote:
| There is a lot of software out there. Were you intending on
| focusing on a specific domain?
| lebaux wrote:
| I am debating that myself, I figured I just make stuff up as
| I go. I discovered a ton of little known alternatives for
| your typical end-user needs, so probably nothing too
| specific.
|
| Alternatively, I work with WordPress and ever-hated SEO for
| some years now[1] and most of the things surrounding these
| two things is a scheme made to extract money from end-users.
| Should I focus on that? For example, if you look for "free
| wordpress themes 2022" you will find that the first page of
| Google results is all listicles of freemium themes that are
| years old. Of course the "best" themes are the ones who offer
| affiliate program.
|
| This is both fail of Google and WordPress, if you ask me. I
| started a sheet of all the websites deems quality results on
| this search query and linked together the repeated offenders,
| I want to use as much data as possible to support my salty
| opinions. The thing is... does anyone even care about this?
|
| [1] https://theseoframework.com, SEO plugin for WordPress,
| FOSS, currently around 150k users, operated mostly by 2 guys.
| Kaotique wrote:
| _Teyuto is a product that allows you to create a customized video
| channel, which is also available on all mobile and smart tv
| applications! The comment must be original and different from any
| other user e positive about the product._
|
| They even forgot to remove the instruction on how to write the
| original comment. What a joke.
|
| When we launched on PH we did zero marketing for it and you do
| get some nice comments and replies from it. Even with zero
| marketing we managed to get top 10 of the day, but I am sure you
| can really game the system with some real effort or by using a
| bunch of fake supporters.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The bio lines on the commenters are a real trip:
|
| "K". "Be patient". "Jjdd". "I'm a college". "Hi". "simple man".
| "hello iam hunting the products". And, last but not least,
| "Bio".
| josourcing wrote:
| I smell GPT-3 (or 2 or 4 or whatever it is, it stinks).
| culopatin wrote:
| What a ride. It might be worth putting quotes around your first
| paragraph because I thought you were a shill or some sort of
| bot at first lol.
| napolux wrote:
| I stay away from PH. And I agree 100% with you.
|
| A tool to create random colors? 500 votes.
|
| NoCode platform for videogames really well done? 5 votes.
| RileyJames wrote:
| 100%. This is exactly why I stopped visiting it. The 'products'
| became so thin. They were more often curations of other
| products.
| andrewSC wrote:
| Not to venture too OT, however, would you be willing to offer
| suggestions for sites like PH before it became what it is
| today? I enjoy seeing "new products" however I'm not sure
| what counts as a high quality source anymore.
| zeruch wrote:
| I never thought I'd miss "Freshmeat.net" (admittedly
| focused on FOSS stuff, but it's listings and descriptions
| and updates were pithy and clear, in chronological order).
|
| Stuff like PH is a boondoggle.
| samjanis wrote:
| Yup. Looks like I'm not the only one seeing this.
|
| I dropped out 2 years ago despite being on there since 2015
| which in _my_ opinion was its peak. It was a great place to
| chat with others about what everyone is building, with their
| _own_ hands, but now there are too many solutions looking for
| a problem.
|
| At least hacker news has managed to keep somewhat neutral,
| despite having its own share of criticisms.
| dealforager wrote:
| This is true of every forum on the internet, including HN. The
| problem is 100x worse if there is money or power on the line,
| such as in Product Hunt.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Where do people go now?
| nest0r wrote:
| jdrc wrote:
| Wasn't that their culture from the start? All its promotion here,
| on twitter and and on indiehackers always felt so fake. Sometimes
| when there's smoke there s fire
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(page generated 2022-03-01 23:02 UTC)